The wife of your youth

March 15, 2012

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“Be intoxicated always in her love.” Proverbs 5:19

It’s a good translation. The verb is used elsewhere for a man staggering in drunkenness (Isaiah 28:7). The sage’s point is that a man and wife should be crazy-in-love together. That is not frivolous. It is the good and wise will of God.

It’s not hard to start marriage that way. It can be hard to stay that way. One thing that helps is the wonderful phrase, “Rejoice in the wife of your youth” (Proverbs 5:18). We men can remember, “She will always be the wife of my youth. She will always be that girl I fell in love with, that girl who said ‘I do’ and gave herself completely to me. I am changing. She is changing. But this will never change — deep in my eyes, she alone will always be that girl to me.”

Go back to where you both started together. It was good. It was of God. It’s worth recovering.